The Beating Heart of the Wristwatch.

• Author: Espada, Martin
• Position: Poem

The Beating Heart of the Wristwatch My father worked as a mechanic in the Air Force, the engines of planes howling in his ears all day. One morning the wristwatch his father gave him was gone. The next day, he saw another soldier wearing the watch. There was nothing he could say: no one would believe the greaser airplane mechanic at the Air Force base in San Antonio. Instead, one howling night he got drunk and tore up the planks of an empty barracks for firewood. There was no way for him to tell time locked in the brig. When he died, I stole my father's wristwatch. I listened to the beating heart of the watch. The heart of the watch kept beating long after my father's heart stopped beating. Somewhere, the son of the man who stole my father's wristwatch in the Air Force holds the watch to his ear and listens to the heart of the watch...